Animal rights group PETA has condemned the Pokémon media franchise and video game series, saying it “paints a rosy picture of what amounts to thinly veiled animal abuse.”

Much like animals in the real world, Pokémon are treated as unfeeling objects and used for such things as human entertainment and as subjects in experiments. The way that Pokémon are stuffed into pokéballs is similar to how circuses chain elephants inside railroad cars and let them out only to perform confusing and often painful tricks that were taught using sharp steel-tipped bullhooks and electric shock prods …if PETA existed in Unova, our motto would be: Pokémon are not ours to use or abuse. They exist for their own reasons. We believe that this is the message that should be sent to children.

As part of the campaign, PETA also developed and released a flash-based parody game which it calls “Pokémon Black and Blue.”